


Scavenger Hunt

by WanderlustandFreedom



Series: Descendants Short Stories and One Shots [21]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Art, Auradon Prep (Disney), Dating, F/M, Fluff, Fun, Funny, Graffiti, Kings & Queens, Marriage Proposal, Painting, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Ruler of Auradon Ben (Disney: Descendants), School, Vandalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24924262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderlustandFreedom/pseuds/WanderlustandFreedom
Summary: Mal can't believe her boyfriend is ditching her in Auradon Prep's furthest parking lot, in the dark, with nothing but a sealed envelope and a locked phone for date night. Also, why is there paint everywhere?Tiny itty-bitty sequel to Tag, You're It that I wrote in an hour and a half.
Relationships: Ben/Mal (Disney: Descendants)
Series: Descendants Short Stories and One Shots [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593727
Comments: 8
Kudos: 84





	Scavenger Hunt

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Descendants. Requested by Publius1788 on ArchiveofourOwn

“So I’m dropping you off.”

“You’re what?”

“I know, I know,” Ben laughed as Mal dropped her phone in her lap and turned to look at him. She probably wouldn’t have looked half as offended if he’d told her something indecent instead. Ben fished inside the front of his suit jacket and withdrew a stiff white envelope, which he handed to Mal.

Mal wrinkled her nose. “Is our date in the mail room?” She asked. The envelope he’d handed her was one of the standard mail slips used in the palace. Stamped in the top left corner was the address to Auradon City’s first residence and in the parallel corner was a mark indicating that the envelope didn’t require a stamp.

“No.” Ben shook his head. “I couldn’t find a blank envelope. Anyways…” They turned a corner into a parking lot and Ben picked a slot relatively close to the exit. Mal frowned. She’d been looking out the window and not paying attention to where they were driving, but the place still looked familiar to her somehow.

“Where are we?” she asked, reaching for the handle and then pushing the door open. She got out and turned a little circle before shutting the door. The parking lot was surrounded by several large, tall trees that weren’t doing much for visibility but were probably much appreciated when the sun was overhead. There were street lamps everywhere – tall black poles with glass windows that had old sun-withered blades of grass stuck to them. And there was a lawn – a large and expansive area of thick grass that stretched out underneath the trees for as far as she could see.

“Don’t recognize it?” Ben laughed as he got out of the car. He took off his suit coat and tossed it into the backseat – it was still warm outside even though the sun was setting and he was wearing a long-sleeved button down underneath it. Mal watched him lock the car and then undo the buttons on his right cuff so he could button through the keychain and leave it to dangle at the end of his sleeve.

“Am I supposed to?”

“I was hoping you would.”

Mal sighed and fingered the edge of the envelope. She worked her fingernail underneath the sealed flap before Ben stopped her with an “Ah-ah!”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “What?”

“You need to give me a five-minute headstart,” he explained. “And, um, here.” He held out his phone and Mal’s eyebrows shot up.

“I get your phone?” Mal smirked as she took the screen and glanced over the screensaver of her and him.” You realize I’m going to take, like, five million pictures, right?”

Ben laughed. “I actually disabled the camera from the lock screen,” he explained, pointing to where the option for the camera usually appeared. “And the voice recognition, and everything else. You can call emergency services, check the time and, well, I guess you could lock me out if you wanted to, but most importantly, you can’t track where I am.”

“So, the goal is to find you?” Mal asked.

“Sort of.” Ben flicked her nose with the tip of his finger and laughed when she wrinkled her nose. “But anyway, five minutes, and then you can start up the hill, okay?”

Mal rolled her eyes and slumped against the car. “Okay, fine, whatever, but I’m going to make you pay for these five minutes.”

“Sure.” Ben rolled his eyes. “Okay. I love you – see you soon!” He kissed her cheek – a movement Mal foiled by ducking – and then took off underneath the trees and up the grassy lawn.

Mal examined Ben’s phone, folded the envelope back and forth, and sighed. She sat down on the curb beside the car and gave her best shot at unlocking Ben’s phone. Birthday… nope. Parent’s birthdays… her birthday… anniversaries…

She knew Ben didn’t actually pick dates or names as passwords and that it was probably some long string of numbers he’d memorized just to piss her off, but it was still fun to have the chance to disable the King of Auradon’s phone. Even if she’d done it tens of times before.

The problem was, once it was locked, then she couldn’t see the photo of them.

Five minutes passed slowly, with Mal huffing and grumbling. When it had been about four, Mal figured there was no way Ben would be able to tell the difference and began to break into the envelope. She slowly demolished it(these things never opened nicely for her), and then unfolded the blue piece of paper inside.

She wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to be looking at.

There was… well, a lot of squiggles. And they seemed to be arranged in a circle… well, more of an oval, really. Mal pulled the paper up to her face to squint at the scribbles. Had he written some sort of message here? Goodness, he really should just stick to writing.

There was an oval… and lines through the center… Was he trying to draw a person? Or maybe-

Oh.

Mal groaned and rubbed her eyes.

He had been trying to draw her old gang tag. Her mother with the “Long Live Evil”. She hadn’t been able to recognize the lettering with all the bad shading underneath it in the dim lighting.

This was going to be a long night.

Mal grumbled, folded the blue paper about fifty more times, and shoved it in her pocket. If it was lucky, she’d remember to take it out before it was washed.

She headed out underneath the trees and looked up the hill. Immediately, she was overtaken with recognition. This was Auradon Prep! He’d taken the long way around and picked the southmost parking lot – of course she wouldn’t recognize it! Mal rolled her eyes and began her trek up the hill. Geesh, it had been a long time since she’d had to hike up these hills.

The campus was full of people – love-drunk couples leaning on each other, besties in similar outfits with matching accessories, and students hauling around their personal libraries and pushing glasses up their noses. Ah, it felt great to be surrounded by adolescent anxieties again. Not really, but it was the thought that counted.

It was dark enough that her purple hair went mostly unnoticed as she followed the path up to the southernmost building, looking for any sort of clue. A group of students were gathered along the south wall. Mal assumed they were probably the new school delinquents and were hiding out to smoke or gossip or something, and then she noticed the black paint smeared on the side of the building.

Had someone vandalized the school? How dare someone try and pick up her legacy?

Mal beelined over and was further confused at the word she found. “No” was splattered across the brick in the most unseemly, horrific, un-artistic-

Oh, this was Ben’s doing, wasn’t it?

Mal frowned, snapped her fingers, and the paint vanished. The students gaped at her. That was probably it for her identity, then, but oh well. Maybe these guys would know-

“That was great!” An outrageously tall boy with a drama club jacket exclaimed. “We were trying to figure out what it was supposed to be.”

“Do you think you could do the one in the math hallway?” a girl with long, straight black hair asked.

“Sure,” Mal shrugged. Math was inside this building, right? She couldn’t remember – she’d skipped that class every day leading up to graduation.

The girl led her inside. Mal could smell the paint almost immediately after they stepped inside. It was refreshing. Also, she was finding it incredibly daring of Ben that he was defacing Auradon Prep and expecting her to clean it up. Ditching her and making her do chores? He was certainly batting a thousand.

Across both walls of the math hallway is another mess. There wasn’t another word for it – it was just a mess. Mal stepped back, shook her head, and wondered what it was supposed to be. On one wall was a blob with an eye in the middle… it looked like it might have a beard…

Geesh, if she were Ben, what would she be trying to draw?

She raised a hand and traced the outside in air and almost immediately realized it. “Oh!” she exclaimed, startling the black-haired girl. “It’s the beast crest!”

She turned around. The other wall featured bumps and dots and something that looked like a bunch of metal springs – oh, it’s her and her friends. The springs are Carlos’s hair.

Mal began to laugh. “Why is he drawing this stuff?”

“You know who it is?” the black-haired girl asked.

“My boyfriend,” Mal agreed. “He’s really bad at art.”

She snapped her fingers and everything disappeared, but another girl appeared at the end of the hallway. “Hey!” she gasped. “Hey, are you the girl who cleaned up outside? We found another mess outside the bathrooms down here – can you come fix it?”

Around the bend were three restrooms – male, female, and non-binary – and outside the female restroom were three blobs. And the strange thing was these looked immediately familiar. Mal glared at them suspiciously, then spotted something stiff and white beside the drinking fountain. When she pulled it out, it was another envelope from the palace. She ripped this one open too, leaving it in a state about as bad as the first, and dropped the shredded remains in the trash. Inside was a note.

She did take a moment to say grace for it not being another messy drawing before she read it.

“It's Bigfoot's hair, a cracked candy cane and a mythical creature you hope to never meet outside your worst nightmares.”

She glanced up at the scribbles at the wall. Then read Ben’s explanation again. Something clicked. He was re-doing all her – and his – old drawings. Badly. But still.

She ducked her head to hide her blush from the two students.

What was the next thing she did? How far into the future was he going to go? She had a few commissioned pieces in the palace that she’d really rather he didn’t ruin.

Mal vanished the art from the wall as she thought and sent the students on their way. It was almost curfew, right? As she left the hall, she remembered what the next thing she’d drawn was. It had been in retaliation for him putting her name on his locker. She’d done a bunch of dragons, right? Now, where would Ben have seen fit to draw some dragons?

That answer came relatively quickly – it was the entire outside of the next building over.

How had Ben been able to do all of this? He must have had some help, but Mal couldn’t imagine anyone being as bad as Ben was at art.

The dragons were erased and on the tourney field, Mal found a gigantic, jagged representation of the one dragon she’d painted burning Audrey to a crisp. On the lawn, caught in Audrey’s hair, she found another envelope. The paper read “Come to Art class” and there were four little stick figures. Mal sneered when she spotted herself in the line-up, with a purple arrow above her head to accentuate how much shorter she’s drawn from everyone else.

Well, he said to go to Art Class…

The door to her old classroom was covered in brutal green flames. Yet another envelope was taped to the door. This time, Mal hesitated before reaching for it. Trembling fingers ripped it open, withdrew the paper, and unfolded it. She let out a sigh of relief at the note.

“Let’s skip the part where you wanted me dead. Hey, where better to draw my dad than his statue?”

The front circle. Mal stuffed Ben’s note into her pocket and headed that way. She practically flung open the front doors and laughed aloud when she saw what had happened to the statue. Lines of purple and green covered it from head to toe, making it look like it was wearing one of her Isle jumpsuits or something. No sign of the original work anywhere, but she must be getting close. Another envelope was tucked in between the Beast’s feet.

There were two papers here. One was another note, but the other was a computer scan of the painting of King Adam standing with the Isle of the Lost at his feet. Even now, years after the fact, Mal can’t stop a smirk of success. This had been the ultimate middle finger then and it was the ultimate middle finger now.

Say, wasn’t the next one Audrey and Gaston?

Mal ripped open Ben’s letter and skimmed the words. “I couldn’t bear to ruin this work of art, but I did do my best with the next one. Do you remember where Audrey’s dorm used to be?”

Nice of him to give her hints.

The outside of Audrey’s dorm was covered with two gigantic stick figures shaking hands. Mal snickered – now he was just being silly. The next envelope was tucked in Audrey’s doorframe. Mal was glad the current resident hadn’t found it.

“You led me here yourself – you know where the next clue is.”

Their lockers. Mal smiled to herself as she turned on her heel. Goodness, he certainly had her running all across campus. And for what? Was this a surprise? A “You-found-me!”? What?

She did get a pleasant surprise though. Ben hadn’t decided to redraw these two portraits – the one of her and her friends and then of him. Instead, two framed copies, as perfect as the originals, had been hung on their lockers with some sort of sticky tack. Mal smiled and traced her fingers down her friend’s faces before heading over to Ben’s locker to examine his face. All these years and he was still just as handsome as she’d captured here.

Mal smiled and then stepped back, looking for an envelope. There didn’t seem to be any. Nothing tucked under the frames or on the walls or even on the ground…

Oh, her locker door was partially propped open. She hadn’t even noticed with the frame on it.

Mal opened her locker and began to search around the edges for anything stiff and white. It was dark, so a little hard to see, so she used her fingers to scratch along at the locker walls. It seemed to be completely empty.

With a growl, she slammed it closed.

“Find anything?”

“Holy heavens!” Mal jumped back. Ben laughed – he’d snuck up on her and had been leaning against the locker behind hers. She hadn’t even noticed him approaching. “Goodness, you scared me!”

“Ta-da!” Ben laughed. “Did you find your surprise?”

“My surprise?” Mal frowned. “Isn’t this the surprise? All my old stuff?”

“Eh,” Ben pretended to mull the idea over. “Sort of. You must have missed something a while back.”

“A while back?”

“Well, not too long ago. More like when you were walking up.”

“What? What did I miss?”

Ben laughed. “I’m just teasing. Here, so you wiped our lockers both clean, remember?”

Mal nodded. She crossed her arms and frowned as she remembered those measly few days where she’d been too sad to draw or doodle anything “I remember.”

“Then what?”

Mal wrinkled her nose. “Then what?” she repeated. “Then nothing. I signed up for art classes.”

“Because…”

“Because-“ Realization dawned. Mal turned and took hold of the frame on her locker. She tugged and revealed a black sharpie design underneath it. A really, really bad tiny crown is underneath it. Just like he’d been trying to drawn years ago.

“That’s right! I was sad and you had Evie tell me to come here. I showed up, you drew a crown, and there was a message on your locker-“ Mal hurried past him, seized the portrait of her laughing boyfriend, and tugged. Underneath was another white and gold sharpie message. Triumph.

“Mal,” it read. “I got you to sign up for art classes this way and now I need to ask you something much more important. Auradon is in need of a leader. I’m doing my best, but I still need a tutor to help me and rule by my side. Will you agree, and I can call you my queen?”

The smile fell off Mal’s face. “What?” she asked.

Ben nudged her. She stared at him for a few seconds, then watched him slowly kneel. His hand vanished into his pocket. Mal covered her face in shock as he opened up a little black box to show her a ring inside. “What do you say?” he whispered with a laugh. “Will you sign up with me?”

Later, Mal would say she’d never signed up for something so fast.

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by Publius1788 on ArchiveofourOwn.


End file.
